Madness (Madness #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Utterly mad...

Delusional...

Bonkers...

Silly, silly words leave the judge's mouth, and his wide grin reveals rows of sharp, pointy teeth, each perfectly aligned.

The courtroom feels like a twisted dream, with the judge's words echoing in my mind, amplifying the madness. His voice is cold and detached, yet it cuts through the air like a knife.

"He's a Cheshire cat," the masculine voice inside my head whispers, adding to the cacophony of my thoughts.

I shake my head from side to side, trying to dislodge the hallucination, but it’s no use.

There is only one Chesh, isn’t there?

"Mad... I’m utterly mad," I repeat to myself inside of my head, the realisation that I’m about to be punished for my sins settling in like a heavy fog.

Shaking my head again, I hope to dispel the delusion, but it does not move.

The judge speaks, but it sounds like he’s underwater, and I remain silent, refusing to answer him, clinging to the last threads of my sanity in this bizarre, nightmarish reality.

Mad... I’m utterly mad.

Shaking my head again in an attempt to make my delusions disappear, my lawyer touches my arm, coaxing me to answer the judge, but I don’t answer him either.

I haven’t spoken at all the entire trial—too scared that the madness will get me into more trouble.

Each word feels like a potential trigger, a key to unlock a door I desperately want to keep shut. The silence is both a shield and a prison.

My mind races, filled with fragmented thoughts and images that refuse to make sense.

Only they do, don’t they?

They are the fragments of memories from my time with Alice, her stories, her madness infecting my bloodstream and making me tumble down the rabbit hole with her.

Although I don’t know if I could get into much more trouble after killing Alice.

“Off with her head!” the voice in my mind shouts. This one is more feminine, her voice shrill and high-pitched, “Off, off, off!”

The courtroom has to understand that I had to.

Alice was mad... utterly mad that it consumed her entire life and inevitably became a part of mine.

I’m now plagued with the same madness that she had.

A curse of being her son.

“A legacy.”

I want to tell the masculine voice to hush that this madness is no legacy and that if it were not for it, I would have never done what I did, even when I felt I had no choice.

“It’s clear to me that you need help, young man, and putting you into the prison system will do you no use...” he bangs his wooden gavel against the sound block, the noise causing a quiet hush to come over the courtroom.

I force myself to keep eye contact, suppressing the urge to glance away from his face.

The judge’s eyes transform into thin slits, his mouth turning into a wide grin with rows and rows of pointy teeth, and no matter how much I shake my head, the delusion doesn’t go away this time.

My heart races, pounding like a drum in my chest, and my palms grow clammy.

I try to remind myself that this isn’t real, that the judge’s monstrous image is just a figment of my imagination, a trick my madness is playing on me.

But the fear feels so real, almost as if I can feel the sharpness of the pointy rows of teeth ready to sink into my soul.

The courtroom feels suffocating, like the walls are closing in on me every moment I stand here, and every second of maintaining eye contact with the judge’s eyes feels like an eternity.

“He’s staring into your soul. He knows what monster lurks beneath.”

I’m mad.

Utterly mad.

I mutter the mantra in my head, just as Alice taught me, as a way to remember that the things before us were not as they seemed.

I squeeze my eyes closed until the white floaty spots cover my vision and then open them again.

Everything in the courtroom is silent, and when I look around at the judge, jury, and my court-appointed attorney, I’m glanced at with pity.

Don’t they understand that I killed Alice?

I deserve no pity.

“You were found guilty of murder, but taking into consideration your mental illness, I’m ordering that you be placed in Eden Institute until such a time you are no longer deemed a risk to yourself or the public,” the judge says, his slitted eyes observing me as I shift foot to foot.

Only those plagued with the madness are sent to Eden Institute, but that’s not what Alice called it.

She called it Wonderland - a place where no one escapes.

Well… no one but her.

The gavel echoes one last time, and the reporters at the back of the room are in an uproar.

Questions are flung at me, but they all morph into another delusion that I can never entirely escape.

Long stems replace their bodies, and leaves that were once arms sway side to side. Their heads turn into petals, and the buds become mouths that honk instead of asking questions with words.

The cacophony of honking petals and swaying leaves overwhelms me, leaving me trapped in this surreal garden of utter madness .

My madness blurs reality and delusion, making it nearly impossible for me to distinguish between the two.

A rose, pansies, tulips, sweetpeas, lilies, a tiger lily, a thistle, and an iris all sway as I walk past them out of the courtroom.

All flowers Alice had planted.

Is this the cost of my freedom from her madness?

To be haunted by her for the rest of my life?

Is her madness that now plagues my mind not enough?

“Alice Lowe?” the guard calls, his eyebrow furrowed. He glances at the wooden clipboard in his hand and then back to me, confusion etched on his face.

A problem I’m very much familiar with.

Alice named me after her. She was convinced I was a girl even after the nurses told her I was a boy.

I inherited her name as well as her madness.

I open my mouth, intent on telling him, but my mouth snaps closed. There’s no use in trying to convince them of anything.

Between my madness and the crime I’m being sentenced for, I will receive no sympathy. I lower my head, resigning myself to the misunderstanding, and nod, moving forward carefully .

The chains around my ankle make it hard to walk, and they rattle with every shuffle of my feet.

I climb into the white van, rust forming around its hinges.

A shiver runs up my spine as I sit down, a sense of foreboding shifting in the air and the weight of the chains that wrap around me a reminder of my captivity.

Though have I ever been free?

“How easy it would be to escape!” t he masculine voice whispers to me. “ We just need to fly, fly, fly.”

“But we cannot fly,” I whisper back, forgetting myself for a moment.

“Poor kid stood no chance. He’s crazy—” The guard is cut off as the van door slams shut with a thud, and the engine roars to life, sending vibrations through the vehicle.

Poor Al... he’s just mad... crazy.